


Of the Same Weave

by extryn



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Coats, Crack, Crack Pairing, Fluff, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-27
Updated: 2012-12-27
Packaged: 2017-11-22 15:34:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/611382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extryn/pseuds/extryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was something in the soft suede that didn't feel like animal or plant, so alien and strangely exotic to the traditional fabrics of its kind.  And though they were suede and wool, sizes apart, they seemed to be so similar as to be made for each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of the Same Weave

**Author's Note:**

> Pure and utter crack, because these two trenchcoats were made for each other. There is some semi-explicit, vague coat sex, and you have been warned. In the interest of avoiding disappointment please also note there is no dialogue, as contrary to what this would have you believe, they are in fact inanimate objects *cough*.

In so many centuries, the coat had never felt quite so at home. And centuries it had been; so long it could barely remember its original bearer, a tall, but scrappy kind of man. So long its once fierce gray wool had faded and pilled, its buttons lost a little of their shine but none of their character. Its fabric was worn, but well-loved, repaired and patched and sewn where bullets and stray javelins had pierced it. It had been made for war, but had known love better than most of its brethren. It had always known love. Draped over the soft shoulders of women, men, creatures it barely knew whether to describe as animal or person but were warm and appreciative all the same. It had watched love, strewn over furniture in some secluded room...sometimes in places not so secluded. Love was as second nature to the coat as grenades and rifle-fire.

It thought it had known love, until centuries later it _felt_ it.

It was something in the soft suede that didn't feel like animal or plant, so alien and strangely exotic to the traditional fabrics of its kind. The shapely cut set to angles that seemed utterly unique, the thin flexibility of the peculiar synthetic material  and way it caught the wind. Its little hammock in the house that was really a machine, where it rested of a night between a forked column instead of on a hook.

It was far, far away from home, too. And though they were suede and wool, sizes apart, they seemed to be so similar as to be made for each other.

The golden suede coat told stories of a long, long night where it had dreamed for so long it feared it would never wake up before a bright, warm dawn. Its grinning, excited wearer filled with a fervour for life that infected the coat and made it wonder if it was dreaming again. And in a hushed, fearful tone, as if even speaking about the memory might mean it would, too, be lost, about a girl that shared its lining and filled it with belonging from seam to seam.

The old, grey woollen one listened, and with a spark of cheek still very much young told its stories of housing up to three people, it fondly remembered, and the feel of bare flesh on its silk interior. It watched the tawny one crumple and fold in embarrassment so desperately its precious fabric creased, its meek attempts to avoid topics it did not understand and had never considered.

How sad, the grey coat thought, that this beautiful, plush coat had never known _love_. Had craved it and found it and lost it but never known it. To hear this coat share for hours on end a life so clearly defined in negative space by love and the lack of love and know that it had never felt love like the grey one suddenly felt. The tan coat seemed to be far too awkward, too naïve, too long dreaming in the dark to see any of it. 

And the grey coat thought of all the times it had brushed against people, against clothes in ways that said so much more than the random, meaningless contact afforded by everyday life. Which ones said want, which ones said affection. When the tanned coat's sleeves bunched as the grey coat poked tentatively once again at the topic, fearlessly, it brushed the folded cuff of its sleeve against the inner hem of the tan one, where slippery lining met synthetic suede. 

For a moment, the suede coat laid limp, cascades of fabric all except for that one, extended cuff that slid over the grey one's own to cover it further. Then the suede snapped taut and a stitch popped into frayed threads and the grey coat watched, stunned, while the tan one's colour seemed to darken, in spots, its very dye running from underneath the folds of the collar. 

Soothingly, the grey coat rubbed against it, little flecks of golden-brown dye staining its well-worn surface. The tan coat permitted the contact and, fearing it would break whatever was left of its precious suede companion, but knowing it could not leave unless it was done, asked softly if the tan coat was alright. They were so alike and so different all at once. It had been too forward. 

It was with a final billow, further away, that the tan one answered. Fear, it explained. Fear because it didn't understand why it had felt so good, again, to have another aside from its wearer touch it like a partner _that needed_ instead of an object. That needed to be held by it as much as the coat needed to be held in turn by that need.

The desire didn't seem strange. The grey coat thought it understood, thought it had never needed anything so much as to have this infinitely special, wondrous golden thing need it back.

Gently, the grey one shared what it knew. That even the fear of loss was not worth a life locked away in endless nights - and that the tawny one agreed with, a soft rumple of its lower hem. The grey one shifted closer, the final wisps of its fabric just barely making contact. Love, it continued, was everywhere to be found. In its centuries of experiencing the whole known universe, even in the darkest places...there was always somebody sharing their warmth under a coat, shielding their loved ones from wind or cold or fear and how the conduit of it from person to person created a sense of belonging like no other. There was nothing more magical than that kind of joy that seemed to evolve from nothing at all but the content completion of giving, in all of its many forms.

Sadly, the tan coat agreed, telling stories of such wonder and such atrocity that its other could hardly imagine . And how every person it had shared them with had been lost, broken , destroyed by this loss that the tan coat knew so well and avoided because even thinking was surely enough to attract the loss to itself, like a predator scenting blood. It shuffled closer, more and more frantic as it described the beast with the utter conviction that now it ohad begun to explain, the deed had been done and any further caution was futile, the loss of this new companionship inevitable. It laid folded over the grey one, collar just brushing where buttons and lapels folded over into lining. It was so difficult not to wrap around the coat entirely as it now babbled that THIS was why it was afraid because it had never felt this happy since she had left and not again, it couldn't find it again and lose--

The grey coat gave up and stifled its pair's hysterics in the soft space where a neck ought to go, carefully slipping the tan one between its panels and fastening buttons tight around it so that the tan one felt nothing but warmth and the kind of dark that protected rather than ensnared and the slight friction of suede on silk as the coat shivered. They stayed, unwilling to move in case the contact would be lost forever the second it was broken.

Finally, the tan one, seeming so much smaller once bundled up in the heavy grey wool, admitted it had never been held before. Reassuringly the grey one squeezed tight. Reaffirmed it wouldn't, couldn't let go. Gently, because the words might scatter if they came out too fast, it told the tan one the real reason it knew that love existed. The sharp stab of the other coat burrowing deeper at the confession was the purest happiness the grey one had felt since it could hardly remember. The quiet mumble of a reply, like the magnitude of its meaning could be escaped if its physical utterance was made small and muffled from deep within the other , felt a blessing.

Long into the night the grey one proved its truth, enclosing the soft suede deep within its sleeves until there was no doubt that an eternity could pass, that the universe could collapse and expand again and again and the grey one would still be holding its pair tight and close. Together as they both turned back into dust, and forever after. With each passing moment, the reality of it soaked them through like rain, turned them sodden with the emotion growing stronger between them.

The grey one knew breakups. It knew of a man with the kindest eyes who had been driven near insane with grief as the one he loved was corrupted, turned into something no longer human until eventually death had been the only solution. It had covered his shoulders, felt his rage and pain pour out. Seen his heart slowly, piece by piece, heal and find new love in his own wearer. But not even death would separate them, it assured. As long as their love endured together, it couldn't. They swore promises to never let it be corrupted far enough to be lost.

It was with only the barest of whimpers that the brown coat conceded its need to give back and share what it had been given, to hold the grey one too, but also the disabling incapability to break contact for even a moment. One moment seemed to be enough for the very fabric of space and time to split between them and swallow them away. A cheeky squeeze cut through the suffusing warmth from the grey coat as, deep within its dark interior, it peeled apart the tanned one's fastenings. It thought there could perhaps be a solution.

The tanned one stiffened, froze a moment, and then slippery, silken lining met warm satin with a tingling friction that spread like wildfire. It arched and stretched into the contact, this feeling of envelopment from the inside like nothing else it had ever known. It dove deeper into the sensation until it was spread wide open into the back panel of the grey coat and almost every bit of its interior found contact with the grey coat's sleek silk. The warmth was furious, consuming like the fires of a star and made all the thoughts and fears, the slight embarrassment at being so exposed and so vulnerable muddled and fuzzy at the edges.

The contortions of thick fabric, sending slick linings grazing and sliding against each other rocked the tan coat further inverse against the heavier wool, pressing and pushing them closer together with its weight and every little slip of silk rippling pleasure and warmth  through their shared surface. The tanned one felt too thin and hollow to withstand it, the unrelenting fever engulfing every last fibre, its fabric creaking in moans. The fears were so far away, so untouchable and irrelevant to this tight world of enclosing darkness and the simultaneous fullness of having another pressing deep inside, held safe and returning it back in equal measure till the universe was bursting at the seams with this terrible, wonderful feeling.

With a cold, sharp hitch of fabric it realised the very edges of its lining had inverted right around, brushing now against the buttons of the grey coat. Their weathered brass edges nipped and scraped at the sensitive satin and tore little strands of thread out of it and it seemed so right, so much of a release to stretch its own button holes through and over the wide metal hemispheres. They filled the long-untouched slits with a perfect security and the coat didn't, couldn't stop, fitting the other two over the opposite buttons and now every last pull of fabric only entwined them closer, forced them tighter. The contact was overwhelming and exquisite, electric wherever it fell and leaving only the tan coat's inner sleeves untouched.

Flooded with sensation so fully it was unbearable did little for the desperate, painful need for more still, to sink so deep that there was nothing left of the lives and forms that were now too flawed and too unfulfilling to ever return to, just this perfect, wonderful feeling, and the need to lose so much of themselves that returning would no longer even be a possibility to be dreaded. Unbidden the tan coat's arms slid outwards, extending tight and smooth and still too raw and too much at once, first one and then the other and the stiffness of the suede on the other side filling out all the spaces in the tan coat's sleeves.

The world fell still and the straining of fabric ceased for a single, transcendent moment where the coats held each other with the utmost completion  from the inside and pulled tight, a single, uninterrupted fabric. The urgent need crested and broke and dwindled down, spent and withering away to expose its bones, leaving just a skeleton of love and warmth. Of wholeness.

It was a wholeness so certain and real that the fear of losing it the second they broke apart was chased away, like light to a shadow, and slowly they extricated themselves from each other. Just crumpled in a heap, they waited until the lights glowed brighter and teal phosphorescence warmed to yellow.

When their wearers came to separate them, they were not apart. One of the tan coat's pockets had somehow come loose from the suede and the lining rode up the sides and inched out from under the flap. It was as if the grey one was coaxing it out, each time, a little piece of it, a memory that wouldn't fade as long as needle and thread were well out of reach - which was likely to be a long time, with the character of the tan coat's bearer. It was not alone and still very, very much loved.

Even when it was torn and ripped off its wearer's back, the grey one taken far away and both their wearers beaten and broken, it no longer felt alone. When it was taken back to its home and another endless night that wasn't teal or yellow but red and menacing. Even so long after, when another of its kind, black and that same deadly crimson like splashes of blood underneath tricked it with promises of love and companionship broke it, too,  with a cruel parody of intimacy  twisted all evil and using instead, it still remembered, took comfort however small.

Even as all seemed finally lost to the gaping maw of the Universe's horrors, the fear never entirely owned the tattered remains of the tan coat again. A tiny little glimmer of hope still flickered. Its fabric was more in shreds than not and now that little pocket lining falling out seemed to be the best, most unblemished part of all of it. As long as it remained untouched, the last part that the grey coat and only the grey coat had ever marred, love must still exist. It clung to the belief when there was nothing else to cling to.

Even as finally, one cold day, it no longer recognised the grey coat. Slashed and punctured in so many places and unrepaired for almost a year, stained and faded until it was hardly grey at all, it was little more than battered material and had no more stories or love to give. The realisation that _this_ was the grey coat was so damning it almost snuffed out that last fading hope.

But once upon a time, it had met this old, beautiful woollen thing that had taught it love and it had never, never forgotten.

As the tan coat came closer it was so painfully clear that this was no longer what it knew as the grey coat but some alien, destroyed husk of a thing that once upon a time its grey coat had been forced to become. And yet the flame still refused to go out. Maybe, just maybe, it could teach this grey coat to love too.

Tentatively, the tan one made a lewd joke about having three separate people under its folds at the one time, and the little sparks of hope grew and roared as the dirty grey thing on the floor slowly, disbelievingly raised itself up.

 

 

 

 


End file.
